DETROIT – Daniel Paille was once again present on the ice for the Boston Bruins during their optional practice at Joe Louis Arena on Wednesday afternoon. It was a non-contact session for the Bruins, so his mere presence isn’t a very good indicator of possible availability for Thursday night’s Game 4 tilt at the Red Wings in Motown. Claude Julien also kept in line with his “mum is the word” policy for talking about player injuries during the postseason.

“I don’t know. He hasn’t been cleared yet by our doctors. He can skate right now because that’s part of the protocol,” said Claude Julien. “But in the playoffs I tell my trainers to just let me know when they’re ready to come back. Other than that they belong to those guys.

“I have no news about Dan coming back into the lineup, so that’s all I can tell you right now.”

Meanwhile on the Detroit side of things, Henrik Zetterberg skated as a line participant on Wednesday for the first time at practice in his recovery from back surgery. He was skating in Pavel Datsyuk’s place with the Russian absent after his girlfriend gave birth to their baby yesterday, and nobody officially ruled him out for Game 4 when both the player and coach were queried about it.

“It was the first practice I really had where I was going through all of the drills, and I was on a [forward] line,” said Zetterberg. “It was fun. I have no idea [about Game 4]. I have to feel ready to play, and today was a good step. We’re still saying Round 2. We all know that we gained a couple of days, but I can’t really say anything right now.”

Both Datsyuk and hard-hitting blueliner Niklas Kronwall were missing from the Red Wings practice, and the Detroit defenseman is also absent with his wife set to deliver their child on Wednesday.